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Chris Wright’s studies were always going to play a part once he called time on life as an elite swimmer. And so it has come to pass with his Bachelor of Environmental Design if not quite as he originally planned.
“A lot of architecture is about thinking outside the box,” Chris (29) says. “And it’s not just about thinking outside the box but also thinking about over there, somewhere different; thinking about and solving a problem for someone else. In many ways that’s what coaching is about.”
Working out what makes them tick
The former Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games swimmer has just taken up the role of assistant coach at the Griffith University pool at the Gold Coast campus, supporting the work of Olympic super coach Michael Bohl.
He is now focused on developing a feeder squad of talented up-and-coming young swimmers who could potentially graduate to Michael Bohl’s high-performance program in the

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A team of students from Griffith University’s five-star MBA program has enjoyed remarkable success at this year’s Global Business Challenge finals, taking second place among an overall competitive field comprising 98 teams from 38 universities across 14 countries.
This year hosted by Griffith and administered by the Queensland University of Technology, the fourth Global Business Challenge presented its participants with the project of designing ‘sustainable solutions to global problems’, a challenge to which Wendy Zernike, Erik Malan and Les Adams rose with aplomb through LRES (Long-term Renewable Energy Storage), their concept for making the move from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
From left: MBA Director Associate Professor Chris Fleming, Erik Malan, Les Adams, Wendy Zernike, team mentor Andrew Zaniewski and Pro Vice Chancellor (Business) Professor David Grant at the 2017 Global Business Challenge.
MBA Director Associate Professor Chris Fleming congratulated the team on their competition result, saying that he is “incredibly proud” of their achievement.

“The team has gone to

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Research into sports activity in Australian children suggests that non-elite participants are losing interest in sport more rapidly and disengaging, not just from sport, but all physical activity. While the leading sports keep growing, their supporting communities are struggling.
It once seemed the sporting fields of suburban and rural Australia churned out world champions at will. The clubs that developed the children into champions also fostered a culture of amateur competition that kept communities connected and healthy.
But the world is now a more complex and demanding place for children and research by Griffith, in partnership with some of the major sporting codes, is trying to turn this trend around.
Dr Wayne Usher is an education researcher at Menzies Health Institute Qld and in 2016 he formed a commercial research partnership with the National Rugby League (NRL) to look into some of the social issues affecting sporting clubs and communities around Australia.
At the

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The incredible surge in popularity of women’s contact sport is a key discussion topic and for a Griffith University academic, it forms the framework of the next phase of her research career.
In November’s Australian Research Council Discovery Programmes Scheme funding outcomes, Dr Adele Pavlidis was awarded $317,185 for the project “Women and the rise of contact sport”, to be hosted by the Griffith Centre for Social & Cultural Research.
Dr Pavlidis, an interdisciplinary sociologist, will look at the rise in women’s contact sport and whether this will shift attitudes  towards women from an individual and societal perspective.
“What we are concerned with is the transformation of gender identity through the prism of females now being able to participate in physical sports usually the domain of men.
“Women’s contact sporting pursuits, like the burgeoning AFL competition, rugby sevens and rugby league are now commanding serious media and audience attention and become permanent fixtures on our sporting calendars.
“There has

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